Wayfarer

There’s your problem right there. It’s a religion, and belief is involved. Either get over it, and get on with it, or walk away. They’re your choices.

From an Hindu, presumably. I wonder if he or she mentioned the Mughal invasion of India in which hundreds of thousands of Buddhist viharas were sacked...

:pray:

Well, yeah. I used to talk to a Buddhist who thought the 'four elements' physics was the real deal, 'ancient knowledge'. That's not me. I believe in s...

Sure. But an assertion is not reasoned argument. Neither are claims that the ancients must have it wrong on account of their being ancient. There is a...

thanks. I realised how intolerant that quote I posted sounded when you called it out. That was nearer to what I was getting at.

The knowledge of some of those esoteric traditions is open to anyone who is willing to meet the requirements, which are sometimes very strict. On the ...

It doesn't rely on corroboration by the public, but a form of peer review. In other words, there are communities of discourse within such ways-of-know...

*

And what the ancients saw, was that man is different to other things 'in nature' because man alone can ask the question as to what it means, what it i...

It's not so much that it's rigid, but that it's the assumed background of many other beliefs. On this forum, and others, I have always argued against ...

I think you're referring here to David Hume's sceptical criticism of inductive reasoning. To which I can only offer Kant's 'answer to Hume' as a rejoi...

So, do you see why I characterise your approach as broadly positivist? Don't take that as an ad hominem, it's a description of a philosophical attitud...

That is the definition of empiricism, it's not 'one view'. One can have views of the implications of empiricism, but the principles are pretty non-neg...

I can't help but take the bait sometimes. Mainly because I'm incredulous that they are taken seriously. But to try and get back to the OP - I see it a...

Of course. Hence, one of my favourite boilerplate quotations. Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism:...

Pretty much 'post Enlightenment philosophy'. A strict division between what can be known by the natural sciences and what is deemed not to be thus kno...

This is a philosophy forum. The aim is to try and express ideas coherently, and preferably with some connection to the recognised problems of philosop...

If you see it that way, you should definitely abandon interest in it. If you start with the opinion that it's all a foregone conclusion, then there's ...

That it was lit. That the chemical compounds which comprise dynamite explode when lit. It varied between philosophers and schools. Some of them were m...

Fair enough. Still, I’m interested in the connection, if any, between logical and physical causation. Without mistaking the map for the territory, it ...

I would have thought that the concept of scientific law can be taken to mean that at least some things are true by necessity. Even Newton’s laws of mo...

And in respect of ‘the contingent’, one of the canonical texts of the Pali canon assets that: ud 8.03 It should be noted that theosophists and others ...

However, that has to be mediated through N?g?rjuna’s adherence to the ‘doctrine of two truths’: Which is why the assertion that ‘there is no ultimate’...

Not what I said. Also, the article I linked to pointed out that whilst the parties to the dispute may be physicsts, it would be relevant to include ph...

Thank you, kind of you to say so. I'm resigned to being one of the forum idealists even though I know it's a minority position. But I continue to lear...

Of course I can’t ‘explain string theory’. Where that came in, was the question of whether science ‘oversteps its mark’ and my claim that such specula...

Actually, I think your argument maps pretty well against the aformentioned 'critique of instrumental reason': This is why I brought in the 'four cause...

:up: Fabulous post. It's going to take me a while to take all that in.

This is waffle. The subject has a pedigree in philosophy, it has bounds, and terms of argument. This kind of statement falls outside them.

Referring back to your OP, you proposed: This list omits causal relations, which are surely as fundamental to knowledge as the other terms. So I'm say...

I'm linking 'cause' to 'reason' in a manner suggested by the 'principle of sufficient reason'. Which I suspect contains suppressed premisses, and/or a...

But surely, every form of reasoning must make use of the term 'because....' - and 'because' means means 'by cause of'. Your first sentence does so: my...

You may recall our brief digression the other day into the concept of meaning in the example of a meaningful proposition that is translated into diffe...

I think that Aristotle's four causes has to be mentioned in this context, namely, formal, efficient, material and final causes. So in answer to the qu...

It comes from Franz Brentano, who was one of Husserl's professors and a key source for later phenomenology. 'In philosophy, intentionality is the powe...

I got vaccinated almost by accident. Went to a medical centre for another purpose and they said ‘hey, while you’re here.....’

A selection of OPs from this poster. Bolds added. Engage at your peril. You're likely to be told you're wrong and stupid.

To me, you're still making faith-statements. You freely admit that all of your scientifically-founded hypotheses are falsifiable and liable to be disc...

It's the thirst for religion and ancestor worship.

Sure. But it has no warrant in their philosophy. Whatever love they have for it is purely personal. That’s one of the glaring internal contradictions ...

If you're dispassionate about it, though, 'science' provides no particular ground for 'humanism'. You know the Italian Renaissance is said to be the s...

Some would say the sole article of faith required is absolute commitement to the non-existence of God.

Or it may be Hempel's Dilemma. But, never mind, you can put the 'science NOT religion' stamp on it, and that will do, right?

I’ve made a clear point with respect to your sweeping statement: There are some scientists who say ‘string theory’ is not science, will never be valid...

The subject I referred to was arguments over the string theory and the interpretation of quantum physics. The differences in interpretation are irreco...

Folks often accuse me of evasion when they don’t understand what I’ve said. Guess it can’t be helped.

It is not at all a non sequiter. The ‘Copenhagen Interpretation of Physics’ and the ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ thought experiment/parody are part of a paradi...

And as Kuhn points out, these are not all part of the same paradigm. Einstein never accepted quantum theory. Schrodinger's cat was making a rhetorical...

Yeah, Peter Woit’s book on string theory was called ‘Not Even Wrong’.